Alicia M. Walker, PhD is an assistant professor of sociology at Missouri State University.

Like many sociologists, her educational background is varied. Before receiving her PhD in sociology at the University of Kentucky, Walker earned a MEd in educational leadership from Texas State University, and a BA in English from the University of Tampa. She appreciates an interdisciplinary focus and collaboration.

She is primarily interested in sexualities, gender, and inequalities. Those interests manifest themselves in research focused on intimate sexual relationships, gender and sexuality, and social inequalities in education. In particular, her work looks at potentially stigmatized behaviors individuals choose in an effort to cope with interpersonal stressors. Her research strives to uncover the underlying dynamics of intimate relationships to understand their quality, content and forms of those ties, and the impact they have on quality of life for the individual as well as others in their social network, as well as the impact of gendered expectations on our behaviors and attitudes, and our own understanding and navigation of our behaviors and attitudes.

Currently, Walker is at work writing a book on men's experiences with infidelity called Unquenchable Masculinity: Affirmation, Attention, and Pressure to Perform in Men's Infidelity. This book is under contract at Palgrave Macmillan and due out in early 2020. She’s also working on a book on women who self-describe as "highly sexual.”

Her debut monograph, The Secret Life of the Cheating Wife: Power, Pragmatism, and Pleasure in Women's Infidelity, is available in hardcover now. The Secret Life of the Cheating Wife is about women's navigation of outside partnerships alongside primary partnerships, and gives voices to women's lived experiences. The book has been discussed in articles published in The New York Times and CNN, among others.

In her free time, she enjoys spending time with her children, with whom she is close, and her beloved rescue dog, Harvey. She also enjoys traveling, great movies, playing cards, and collecting statues of the goddesses of love, marriage, and fertility (as they relate to her work).

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